Modelling a cartoon house in Maya

Firstly what I did was creating a cube using the cube polygon and made sure it was at the centre of the grid. Next I went into vertex mode and selected the top vertices on the cube and dragged them up and then I selected the vertices on one side of the cube and dragged them out, creating a 3D rectangle. I then selected Face mode and selected the top face of the rectangle and used the Extrude tool under "Edit mesh" and pressed W to drag the face up, I then pressed R to scale the face in slightly so it looked more like a roof.

After that I clicked on "Insert Edgle Loop Tool" under "Edit Mesh" and placed an Edge Loop near the bottom of the house, I added another Loop near the front face of the house, I also added one loop on each side on the top of the house, I finally I added one at the back of the house and finally I added one right under teh top part of the roof. However to make the house look more house-shaped when smoother (by pressing 3) I needed to add a few more edge loops. So I added one above the base of the house and pressed R to scale it out a bit more, therefore making the roof a little bit wider. I added another edge loop above the one I just placed and did the same.

Next I went into the front view as I wanted to fix an edge loop on the right-side of the house and I went into Vertex mode and shift-dragged the vertices on the edge loop on the right side of the house that I wanted to move. Then I pressed V and moved the selected vertices slightly to the right, I shift-dragged the top selected verticy to deselect it as it was getting too close to the one of the edges. I then repeated the process with the edge loop on the left side of the face.

I then went back onto the perspective view and moved the edge loop that was near the front of the house a bit closer to the edge, next I added another edge loop that was slightly behind it. I then went into Front view and selected the four vertices at the very top and scaled them in slightly then I went back into the grid view. Next I clicked on the box next to "Insert Edge Loop Tool" under "Edit Mesh" and chose "Multiple edge loops" then next to "Number of edge loops" I typed 2 in. Then I placed those loops on the roof of the house, down the the center.

Next I started to create the door for the house. Under the polygons tab I selected the "Polygon pipe". Then in the Channel box editor, under INPUTS, I changed the thickness of the polygon pipe to 0.12. Next I went into Top view and went into face mode and seleted faces on the bottom half of the pipe and then deleted them. Then I went back into the perspective view, selected the pipe arc and pressed E to rotate it forward 90 degrees.

I then went into the front view and turned on wire framing (icon of a blue cube with a white outline). Then in object mode I selected the pipe arc and scaled it down, I then moved the arc up to about where the door will be. Next I went back into the perspective view and flattened the arc a bit so that it wasn't as thick and placed it near the front face of the house. Then I selected the edge loops at the bottom of the arc on both sides and went back into the front view and then clicked on "Extrude" under "Edit mesh" and pressed W to drag down the selected edge loops, I then held X and middle-mouse buttoned the center of the grid so that the loops would "snap" to the center.

I went back into the perspective view, went into object mode and selected the arc. I went into "Mesh" then scrolled down and clicked on "Fill hole" which filled the holes of the extended edge loops. I then inserted an edge loop (making sure that the settings were reset) near the bottom of the arc. I then went into face mode and selected the face on the inside of the door and used the extrude tool to extend the face to the other side of the door, but not quite touching it as I needed to insert another edge loop on the other side of the door that I was extending the face to. I inserted an edge loop to where it would line up with the extended face. I then deleted the two inside faces of the door, next I clicked on "Merge vertex tool" under "Edit Mesh" and selected all the vertices that I wanted to extend and connected them to the vertices on the other side of the door- so now they were connected. Next I went into object mode and moved the door onto the front face fo the house.

Then I clicked on "Isolate select" (icon of a red arrow with a green box outline) so that the door was isolated from the house, which would allow me to edit the door easier. Next I clicked on the box next to "Insert edge loop tool" and selected "Multiple edge loops" and changed "Number of edge loops" to 2. I then inserted them along the side of one side of the door and scaled them out a bit while they were still selected until they were almost on the edge of the side. I then added another edge loop on the front side of the door close to the edge on the left and another edge loop close to the edge on the right. I then added 2 edge loops on the bottom of the door, going horizontal, and scaled them up so that the edge loops were close to the edges. I also added 2 inner edges close to each side and one edge on top and on the left of one of the bottom faces. I did the same on the other side of the door. I also added 3 edge loops to each side of the door and sseparated them a bit. Adding these extra edge loops meant that when smoothing the door, the door would retain its shape and it wouldn't look weird.

The frame of the door was now done, so next I started adding some other things for the door. One of these was a cube which a resized and scaled into a small rectangle and added edge loops close to the edges on the left, right, front, back, top and bottom of the rectangle.

Next I went into the front view, turned on wire framing and moved the rectangle slightly up and to the left so that it was in line with the middle-left of the door. Then I went back into the perspective view and moved the rectangle into the front face of the house, inside the door and then I duplicated the rectangle (Ctr+D) and placed the duplicate above the orignal.

Then I started to create the door handle. I inserted a Polygon Torus, then under INPUTS, I changed the Section Radius to 0.09 and then scaled it down, I also changed the Subdivision Axis to 12 and the Subdivision Height to 12 as well. Next I went into the top view and went into Face mode and selected and deleted the faces on the bottom half of the torus. Then I went back into the perspective view and pressed E and changed the Rotate Z value to 90 and I changed the Rotate X value to 180. Then I went into the side view and moved the polygon onto the door and then I went back into the perspective view and moved the ploygon to the right and scaled it down a bit more. The door shape was now done!

Next I started to detail the door a bit more. I started this by creating a flat plane by clicking on the flat plane polygon icon and I removed most its subdivisions by going onto the channel box editor and changing the values for the subdivision height and width to 1. I then pressed E and rotated it forward 90 degrees and placed the plane just behind the door. Then I went into the front view, pressed R and scaled it down so that it fit with the door frame, after that I used the Extrude tool and selected the top face of the plane and extruded the face up. I then scaled the extened face in. I then extruded the face on the top of the extended face and then scaled that in as well so that it fit within the doorframe. I repeated the process one more time.